Rugger Bugger

Did you know he was called 'Captain Rugby' in Europe? True story. Not sure if that makes him more or less cool. But what is cool about this figure?

Number 1:
He flat-out rocks the party in the Nintendo Entertainment System GI Joe videogame by Taxan. With the most potent hand-to-hand stats and a fearsome spread weapon (which appears to fire footballs), the Captain was a pretty permanent fixture on everyone's three man team. While the game insisted the leader position be shuffled about, you'd be silly not to have this guy as a mainstay.

Number 2:
Accessory count.

Helmet
Visor
Rocket Launcher
Rocket
Rocket
Rocket
Rocket
Backpack
Football Grenade
Football Grenade
Football Grenade
Elbow Pad
Elbow Pad
Big Fuckin' Gun

Cheeky double and triple counting gives us a grand total of 14 individual accessories. And they're outrageous without being spring loaded. This guy brings the pain. All day long. Love that removable helmet with flip-down visor. Love. The amount of Hi Ex this guy packs is off the chart. Grid Iron hunts Terrordromes. Dead.



Number 3:
He can carry all of this stuff.

The pads, grenades, pack, helmet - all worn. Leaving his hands free to caress his 4-shot rocket launcher and baddass shotgun. He's ready to shoot down both halves of a Cobra Condor and blow the shit out of the Aero-Vipers after they thought they'd parachute to safety.

1990 represents the last year of real thoughtfulness and good taste behind a character's gear, before it all became about the spring launchers. Neon.'Sprue guns'.

Yes. 'Good taste' is what I called this much maligned character's accessories. Grid Iron's stuff is all uniquely his (football grenades? You better believe nobody's used them since). I like to think of them less as 'football grenades' and more like 'really, really big grenades'. At least that must mean he has a helluva good throwing arm... Right?

Why does he get bad press? It's not like he's wearing a red football jersey. The Captain's yellow pants are a bit garish, I'll admit. As for the rest, he looks like he's rocking an oldskool Vietnam-era flack vest over a cool, digi-camo sweater. Cut off gloves are pure vanilla.

Armed with enough stuff to start a war and as an integral part of the NES team, I had to have him. Expect to see more of this guy on the site.

Swampmasher

I did a tally not too long ago of which production years I had the highest number of vehicle purchases in. I'm no completionist, but without intending it, I have every G.I. Joe vehicle produced in 1988, save for the Mean Dog. Still trying to twist my friend Paul's arm for his. I suppose it was just a good year. Somewhat of a vehicle reboot year, I'd say. There was a new jeep, new APC, new jet, new assault vehicles, new oddballs. By oddballs, I refer to the RPV and Swampmasher.

The RPV is still an anomaly. The blueprints suggest it's just basically a missile launcher.

 Boring.

To me, the name Remote Piloted Vehicle suggests that it is a drone launcher, used for flying and spying. At least that way it carves out its own niche. Because let's face it, is there a G.I. Joe vehicle in existence that doesn't fire a missile? Or seven?

The Swampmasher has a pretty narrow niche too. And a pretty unique gimmick. But what the hell does it do?

Mash swamps, that's what.

It's small, low-slung, possesses an absurdly large primary weapon and carries three personnel and not much else. No room for gear. Or fuel. Or ammo. It does have a tow hook, but I doubt many towable items would be able to travel the terrain this thing is built for. Boasting a 4.3 litre, 350 brake horse power engine I suppose this would make for a pretty utilitarian tractor for use around a base. Combine a massively overpowered engine with its diminutive size, the 'Masher is not designed with range in mind. She's built to get into an inaccessible place, get concealed and lie in ambush.

I don't care much for the ordinance. I only have one of the two 'magnetic array detection bombs' and their presence is not terribly thought-through. They jut out further than the vehicle's bull-bar and that seems like a liability on a vehicle designed to rampage through unforgiving environments.

And the wheel gimmick? It's unique, but doesn't function as smoothly as I'd like. I can't find any real-life examples of this setup that isn't attached to luggage. How the axles and drive-train functions is a mystery. Pretty impressive universal joints in play there, as this would have to be a twelve wheel-drive vehicle in order to achieve the feats it intends. The 'tyres' claw-like appearance seem to clog a little too easily with the kind of swamp fauna it's likely to encounter. All told, I'd rather four large balloon tires. That would make this just a big quad. No fun, right?

Aaaaand just when you thought this hunk of mint and grape flavour couldn't get any tastier, celebrity customizer Fireflyed does this:

Yuck. Why does this guy have to come along and make all my toys look silly?

Desert Attack Chopper

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, it was 2002. And in that year of 2002 a few critical things happened.


Number 1

I finished school. I also started making money and that meant that over the next few years, the toy collection swelled considerably. Ebay was my friend.


Number 2

New GI Joe comics were once again seeing print. They had been absent since the Marvel run ended with issue number 155 in 1994. The new Joe book was carried by Devil's Due and picked up in real time, with the Joes being reinstated after an eight year hiatus.


Number 3

Hasbro made the Night Attack Chopper.

Of course, Hasbro made a bunch of other shizz that year. None worth mentioning I'd say. Well, perhaps one or two. But they are a distant second or third to this baby.

Packed in a windowless open box during a 'experimental' period of GI Joe, the NAC did go quietly into the night as a footnote of GI history. It pains me to think that this gem was on clearance in some stores in the USA for as little as $8. Ooh. The pain. Cheap awesome toys. Ouch ouch.

Well it does pain me, dammit. The one I scored off of Ebay cost me $40. A fair price, but an uncontested auction. Should I have paid less? Some fools were duking it out in bidding wars approaching $60-$70.
Biz.
zarre.

What sense can one glean from the previous paragraph? Well, this: the NAC is a far more sought after item now I feel than it was at the time of its release. For this I blame Hasbro. GI Joe has been without a competent replacement for the venerable Tomahawk since, well, the Tomahawk. A truly indispensable vehicle with a truly vital role which saw only one release. Since then we've had this:

And this:

And most recently this:

None which match the versatility, capacity and fun the Tomahawk had in buckets. The NAC is the closest we received since. And I feel it is finally getting the respect it deserves. It is a damn fine chopper.

Available in two flavours- original mint and liquorice or caramel and chocolate, she could either have the intended Night Force-looking gettup; or look very respectable next to a Tomahawk or three in a desert scheme. I fancied the desert look more for a number of reasons. Three to be precise.

It looks good next to a Tomahawk.

It has a Soviet attack helo resonance.

It didn't seem like anyone else was bidding on it.

Why did I wait so long? Was it worth the hype? And the inflated postage cost? A whopping $60.

Read on.

I passed her up for the longest time for the same reason so many of us did. It has some pretty wacky elements. Examine if you will, the package art. Duke and Snake-Eyes are riding the missile launchers. Now vintage Joe vehicles were always portrayed on the package with obscene amounts of troops hanging off of them. But the toys themselves would typically have some runners with footpegs for you to place figures on that selfsame spot yourself. Slightly less absurd that this wicked Dr Strangelove routine.

Then there are the rotors. Weird. And why? I think they were the biggest detractor for me. You too? I think so. And to think, the designer who dreamed these up thought they would be a selling point. Excellent job, Percy. To the front of the class with you.

Then there are these words: Sound Attack! Sound and Light-Up Features! Spinning Rotors! Fold-Down Handgrip!

Action features are typically greeted with disdain. Particularly by Joe fans, I've noticed. I think it's because for the longest time we did without them and did just fine, making our own sound effects, strapping our own torches to our toys, spinning our own rotors. Well, maybe not the last one. If every GI Joe and Cobra chopper had the same mechanism as the 1983 Dragonfly, I'd be a happy boy. But as soon as we had toys with oversized sound effect backpacks, ninja chopping action, obscenely large spring-fired missile launchers, we began to sneer. Haven't stopped since. Bitter and twisted old men we all are.

But I'm gonna do something plain vanilla insane in this article and say I like the NAC's features. All of the NAC's features. Even the Sound Attack port.

So let's talk about why this helo is a worthy addition to your Joe team.

First off, it does this:

And this:

Spinning rotor mechanism is always welcome on a helicopter. It's a royal pain in the arse to hold the damn thing and spin the rotors by hand and make whup-whup-whup sounds with your mouth . But with this beauty, you just hold the tail, pull the trigger and all is taken care of. Pulling the trigger even causes a red light in the nose sensor cluster to glow for the duration of the sound effect. Granted, the weight of the helo makes me reluctant to hold it by the tail only, since there is a joint where the tail plugs into the fuselage. My fear is the chopper sagging at the joint and ultimately snapping it. Not quite 'Sturdy Construction for Rugged Play'.

The missile tubes are pure vanilla. Fold down a handle, crank back on the trigger and the winglets flip out. Pull back on the trigger (provided you wound up the nobs on the back of the tubes sufficiently) and missiles will shoot out from both sides until all are gone. I can't find a way for alternating fire, which is a minor sadness, but not a deal breaker. Joes go in hot! The downside to the mechanism is that the fold away handle reduces the interior space to pure lip service. This is alright in my book because anyone who actually played with their choppers know how fiddly it is to seat action figures inside. It's more a case of land, chuck 'em in, dust off. But if setting it up on your shelf is what you're into, you can very snugly fit a figure in this recess,

slide the door shut, fold down the winglets and pretend he was never even there. Was there a point to that? Egh, pretend there are figures in there. Or sandwich the requisite amount on top of one another. There are your two options.

Did I mention doors? Yes, the NAC and DAC one-up the Tomahawk by having side doors. That slide shut. And can be removed completely if so desired. Score.

Closing doors. NAC 1, Tomahawk 0

Up front, things are far more spacious. The pilot has a great bubble canopy for excellent vision, a central control column easily within grasp, and a nice sticker for instrumentation. The front seat folds forward allowing ease of access to the two back seats. Like a Maclaren sports car, the driver sits up front centrally, with two seats behind on either side. Not quite sure whether the role of the occupants is crew or passenger. There are no instruments or controls, so I'm gonna go with passenger. Which makes this a pretty demanding whirlybird for one pilot to operate. And speaking of pilots, one must assume this is Wild Bill's new ride, though no pilot was included. Instead, Bill got packed in with the Patriot Grizzly tank. Yeah. That confuses me too.  

The gun armament up front is staggering. A little overwhelming for me really. There is a beast of a chaingun in the middle which is sadly limited to side to side motion; and a chaingun and miscellaneous other gun which have Sound Attack plugs that can be used interchangeably on the left and right ports. Only one is active though, and using a discreet button you can activate the gun firing sound effect. Never a selling point, it's not a detractor as it is nicely tucked away and I do catch myself wondering how best to customize my port. Scarlett's crossbow? How about Blowtorch's flame pistol? Maybe the obscene gun they strapped to the Conquest released around this time? Now I'm just being rude.

Laughably the Sound Attack weapons are designed to be wielded. Very Rob Liefeld.

When all is said and done, I like the look of the chopper with no guns. The middle one is a bit tasteless in how far it sticks out. And this brings me to my (and probably every review's) great gripe about this toy- it has no ground clearance. When it lands, it is almost belly-flush with the ground. There are token wheels - active ones on either side and a molded fixed one in the tail, but they offer not even a centimeter of height.

As a result, the nose gun cannot be mounted beneath the cockpit as with the Dragonfly and Tomahawk, but instead protrudes rather obscenely like a mid-air refueling nozzle. Thankfully all of the guns are designed to be freely removable. But it's a gunship right? It needs a gun! And this matter is what plagues me every night, tossing, turning, unable to sleep.

Last feature worth noting. This bird makes an entry in the list of Joe helicopters to be equipped with a winch and a wind-out, wind-in feature and a good foot or more of rope. But unlike its brethren, this chopper's line descends from cabin level, so as to be of practical use for the occupants. To this end, the line attaches to a foothold or handhold and not a hook, so the intention is clearly to use this to disembark or retrieve personnel and get them on board, not simply to have them dangle from a hook for the flight home. Come to think of it, that always bugged me about the Tomahawk. Glad they seem to be correcting it in the re-release...

...wait, they aren't. Another point to the NAC.

Tasteful: the winder knob is well concealed.
Tasteless: a sticker proclaiming 'Blast'.

 

Are you a vehicle guy, or a figure guy?

Ever thought about that question? It's the Pulp Fiction debate. You can be an Elvis Presley fan. You can also be a fan of The Beatles. But you can never like them both equally. One must edge out the other.

Thanks Uma.

Two opinions jump out at me immediately. The first is our celebrated bastion of Joe news and reviews, Justin 'General Hawk' Bell, who maintains that his interest in the toys is primarily the figures and characters. He has also often expressed a love for new characters and uncelebrated ones such as his nichey favourite, Hit & Run. Vehicles have always been secondary for him. Contrast that with the opinion of Christopher AKA 'Sidewinder' from GI Joe Review Podcast who, if asked as a kid what his favourite GI Joe was, would promptly reply 'The Tomahawk'. He was not referring to a figure.

Not too long ago I stumbled onto an online poll which called for votes on the greatest A Real American Hero toys, hoping to distill a list of ten. Not a single figure made the list. While I can't vouch for the integrity of the poll or its reach, it does give some indication of a handful of fans' consensus about what constitutes a truly great toy. And can you blame them? When all's said and done, in spite of a wealth of varied accessories, paint designs, sculpting and supporting literature, each 3 3/4 inch o-ring figure is much the same as the next in construction and features. The vehicles however were as eclectic and as fantastical (or realistic) as you could get.

The question most of us were plagued with after encountering the modern era figures concerned their backwards compatibility with the vehicles. The earliest reviews all gave size comparisons with the old figures, indicating a height increase to approximately four inches. The foot and back holes where of reduced size, on some figures back holes were altogether absent. Hip articulation was somewhat restricted. So the fans were quickly flung into a panic - sure, the figures look great, but will they be able to ride in a vintage VAMP?

Realizing their error, Hasbro made mold adjustments to a number of re-released vehicles to better accommodate their new offspring. Of course they were never going to refurbish and re-release 12 years worth of vehicles mind you. So the rest of our vintage motorpool went through an awkward phase of round peg; square hole. Let's face it, for all the triumphs of our new Joes, looking comfortable in oldskool vehicles ain't one.

Waitaminute! Tangent alert! Wasn't this an article about which camp I subscribe to? Vehicles or figures? How did I get onto bashing modern Joes? Well, let me join the dots...

I'm a vehicle guy. I had a collection of about four Joes before I had my first set of 'wheels'. It was a Tiger Paw. Then it was the Pulverizer. Then the WOLF. While the figure collection grew and grew, my idea of a good time (other than duking it out with my Ninja Force figures), was loading up a BUGG and a Warthog and waging armoured warfare over my parents generous expanse of lawn. Don't get me wrong, I loved the figures. GI Joe was very optimally scaled to have a slew of vehicles but also for the lowest common denominator (the figures) to be large enough to be fun on their own. As such, the figures got a lot of love. But they got even more love as the crew of a jeep or tank or plane. I guess the play pattern just multiplied exponentially because those vehicles were always built for action. Why do you think every single item of box art portraying vehicles has absolutely every weapon and salvo of ordinance firing? The vehicles just ramped up the violence to Defcon 3!

My love for the vehicles is so great, it is solely responsible for driving a wedge between me and the modern construction of Joe. These newbies are not and can never be substitutes for my original figures. They will never look as good in the vehicles. Sometimes they'll look downright awful. And even the valiant efforts at reviving the old Skystriker and Tomahawk are failures in my eyes. The originals were scaled to a certain size of figure and that was the maximum scale 'cheating' that could occur without the vehicle proportions starting to stink. We can see stinky proportions later on in the line with the Liquidator and Storm Eagle jets which were undersized planes with disproportionate cockpits in order to accommodate a pilot.

 Hell, the Battle Force 2000's Vector had similarly comical proportions. With the revised 'Striker and 'Hawk, we have a situation that feels forced. The interiors are redone to better accommodate newbies, but always at a cost. We lost the rear seat on the Skystriker, and the remaining seat has the included pilot in a reclined position. I hate that. The forthcoming Eaglehawk maintains the dual cockpit but the pilots really do appear to be knocking elbows. Don't get me wrong, the re-tooling is commendable. The floor appears to be sunken, the designers have eked out as much space as they possibly could have to cram the current figures in and still produce a toy that will seamlessly fit in with the vintage Tomahawk. But it still seems forced.

Having answered whether I'm a vehicle guy or a figure guy already, all that remains is to conclude my view on the modern sculpt era and its awkward juxtaposition with the established stable of classic vehicles. We see so much effort expended in re-doing the old vehicles, the far simpler solution seems to have evaded the manufacturers all along - make figures that fit. They say hindsight is 20/20. Perhaps if they knew what they know now about the fanbase's rampant love for the classic vehicles, they would have produced smaller no-ring figures with the classic back- and footpeg dimensions. Maybe they expected the 25th anniversary style to have lived and died as a commemorative footnote in Joe history, and not gone on to completely replace the o-ring brigade. It always seemed strange to me that they would commemorate GI Joe A Real American Hero's 25th birthday with a line of figures that completely ignored the greatest strength of that line - compatibility. Perhaps the no-ring era should have remained an oddity. It didn't, of course.

 If I am to speculate on the future of Joe, based on my continual return to loving the o-ring figures more than everything else, we will see a return to o-ring scaling with modern era proportions, construction and features. Yes friends, the time may come again when we are made to re-collect all the characters we hold so dear to our hearts, just as we did in the 25th and 30th anniversary revolution. Hell, we do it already. Practically every wave has a replacement for last wave's Duke, Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow. But that HiSS you have from 1983 will keep looking sweeter and sweeter... Your old HQ will never need a replacement... The WHALE will never be topped by a later release... You can always count on the vehicles to stand the test of time.

I'm a vehicle guy.

CLAWing Back

Admittedly a terrible title. Kept trying to think of a better one. Nothing came.

But it's fitting, because rescued from the brink of oblivion, I give you not one, but two Cobra Light Aerial Weapons.

So these puppies and their blueprints were discovered in local comic store Cosmic Comics on Beyers Naude Drive, Johannesburg, along with some other assorted tat. CLAWs have always intrigued me, it is so exotic these days to see so many design elements invested in a small vehicle such as this. The red aping of the mold used in the 25th Anniversary pack with a (Strato) Viper, Outback and the FLAK cannon was a bit off-putting. It reduced the size, number of parts and features of the original to bare lip service. It makes me a very happy boy to report that this 25th knock off is about as close to the original as these things are:

...not very.

But a further obstacle stood between me and buying one online. The constant nag of Modern Era compatibility. But as of the writing of this article, I'm off collecting Modern Era figures. At least for now.

So what does the CLAW do so well? It has a staggering amount of features for a vehicle so small, including:

• Removable bomb and rockets
• Removable gun shroud
• Movable ailerons
• Movable canard wings
• Rolling wheels
• Retractable rear wheels
• Extending wings
• Holds one figure

In addition to all this, the molding is superb. Panel lines and intricate mechanical details abound, the rear landing gear have molded shocks, the gun, gear, rockets and exhaust nozzles are rendered in a dark grey, contrasting nicely with the brilliant eggshell fuselage...

...funny thing about that word 'eggshell'. Appropriate too. Yes folks, this is a very frail and brittle toy. Treat it like gold leaf. I can't see it crashing onto anything firmer than soft grass unscathed. The white plastic is also prone to discolouration and the joints to which the rear wheels clip look in danger of stressing and cracking. This ain't no Air Commando's Glider!

And what function do they serve for Cobra? The cartoon used them as all out, air warfare pawns, often animating a squadron of them accompanying FANGs to harass GI Joe ground forces. The comic book both in American and British publications used them as one-man stealth insertion craft thus:

But all mediums ignored the CLAWs real shining attribute - unmanned drone. I envision a scenario where a small group of Cobra commandos need air support and extraction, the CLAWs are dispatched to assist, engaging hostiles from the air with a flurry of bombs, rockets and machine gun fire, before landing on a short dirt strip or road and functioning as as air extraction for the departing Cobra forces. In an age of unmanned drone warfare, it makes sense for Cobra to top US drones by firstly being rocket powered and secondly being able to hold a trooper if needs be. It never included a specialized pilot and this supports the theory that it is deployed in such capacity and can be returned to base as a drone vehicle, without the occupant having to undergo too much specialized training in its operation. 

Okay, so how many toys do you own?

This hobby consumes me. I can't seem to keep it out of even the most adult, polite conversation.  It's my thing. It'll be my thing for as long as I live. Yours too perhaps. You are, after all, reading a blog about toys. So what is the layperson question I get more often than most?

Well.

It's the title of this article, so don't make me repeat it. Any second-year student will tell you it's pretty amateurish to repeat the article's title, word for word. So there.

If you get this question as often as I do, it sets your mind aflight on a number of tangents. How do you quantify a toy collection? Each individual figure no doubt includes accessories. Some of those accessories can be the size of, if not bigger than, other figures. Do vehicles including a figure or figures and accessories count as one, or do you break the set down into smaller components that can each answer to the catchall word 'toy'? It soon becomes a mind-bogglingly complex task and a definite conversation killer you wished you hadn't embarked on, as the glazed over look in the girl you are trying so hard to impress becomes more apparent.

Doesn't stop it from being a fascinating question for the self-respecting toy geek, tho.

To answer it satisfyingly, you have to limit its scope a little. Set some criteria. define the ambit.

I have my answer, I got it by limiting my census to the scale world I overwhelmingly collect. That being the 3 to 4 inch, 1:18 scale a la GI Joe, Star Wars, and now Marvel Universe, to name but a few. That is not to say I don't have other scaled toys. I do. Everything from Micromachine people to 12-inch Gundam suits. But for now, I'm satisfied to know how many 1:18 people inhabit my home. Thus...

So how many toys do I own? Well, as of the making of this video, 703 souls inhabited my home. A further ten turned up a day later, they had been hiding in various places I'd missed. As of the writing of this article, a further 85 have entered my life so I am two figures short of 800. It took me about 10 hours of labour finding, sorting, setting them out and then packing them back. It was sometimes fun, most times back breaking, and left my room in a complete shambles with vehicles strewn about the floor, stripped of their drivers. I should have taken a picture of that. Did you notice how they've been ordered according to date stamp from old to new? Of course you don't, because that is on skuzzy clip. That was a royal pain in the ass to do. But it is done and I have my answer. Totally sleep better at night now.

Three Deadly Ebay Sins

Being an avid Ebay-er since 1999, I have a good helping of success stories... and a handful of disasters. But who's got the time? Instead, here are three of my favourite shockers. And they are all the sad symptoms of being a buyer in South Africa.

First up we have the absurd situation where a loose figure costs more than twice its 'buy it now' price in postage. Are they packaging it in gold leaf? A simple bubble envelope will suffice. Really.

Here we have another model citizen of Ebay. Laughably indicating that he/she/it ships worldwide and then following up with the most exhaustive list of exceptions. And what's right at the top? Africa. Well sir/madam/thing, fuck you for defeating my attempts at filtering you out. You waste my time. And battery. 14%. Damn smartphones.

And the coup de grace. I don't think it necessary to say anything more than that I had a Flagg sent to me from the United States for $180 in shipping charges two and a half years ago. Last year a Mobile Command Centre set me back $60 in shipping. The above item's charge is either a sick joke. Or I'll never be able to afford anything bigger than a Snowcat for the rest of my collecting days.

Love that the service is called 'UPS Worldwide Saver'. Assholes.